FYI--Cope's Sale on 30-Round AR Magazines

Cope's Distributing has a sale right now for 30-round ASC AR-15 (5.56 mm) magazines for $8.75 each. (Plus shipping and handling, which is generally $9.95 flat rate).

America, the Divided

This op-ed from the Telegraph says that the U.S. has become like many European nations:

The United States is now officially one of us: an Old World country complete with class hatred, ethnic Balkanisation, bourgeois guilt and a paternalist ruling elite. And it is locked into the same death spiral of high public spending and self-defeating wealth redistribution as we are. Welcome to the future, and the beginning of what may turn out to be the terminal decline of the West.

However, it also has one of the clearest insights into why so many misjudged the outcome of the election.

It has become clear why it was so easy to misjudge the significance of the apparently lacklustre Obama campaign – the drastically reduced crowds at his events; his underwhelming, peevish performances in the debates, and his failure to produce any substantive plan for a second term – as signs of how the election would go. Mitt Romney may have pulled far larger and more enthusiastic audiences for his stump speeches but this contest was not, in the end, going to be about speeches or arguments. The reason that so many of those who would vote for the incumbent president did not bother to turn out to see him as he toured the country was that they were largely untouched by the campaign: their voting allegiance was always a certainty. It was not about political ideas at all. It was about identity: about who and what you were in the most visceral and personal sense – about race, about class, about being the kind of person you believed it was necessary to be.

(Underline added). The article goes on to discuss how Obama has actually been very divisive, with his class war rhetoric and identity politics, and the corrupting influence of a permanent ruling class.

Argentina Headed Toward Default

The Telegraph reports that Fitch has downgraded Argentina's bond ratings to "CC" for long-term debt, and "C" for short term debt, and predicts that Argentina will default. At one time, Argentina was a wealthy, Western country. And then it adopted socialistic economic principles. It is Detroit writ large, and a sober reminder of where the U.S. is headed.

Bartering in Rural Kenya

The Christian Science Monitor reports on bartering in rural Kenya. Basically, the story reports that poor farmers benefit from bartering rather than using cash, because they can get more value for their products than selling the products to middle-men.

19 Bodies Found in Mass Grave in Mexico

Sadly, this is not as shocking as it should be. From the Daily Mail:

Nineteen bodies have been discovered in Mexico's northern border state of Chihuahua after gruesomely tortured and buried some for years in mass graves near Texas' border.

Eleven found in Ejido Jesus Carranza were recognized as having been dead for at least two years while eight others had been tortured and killed in recent days, the state prosecutor's office for missing people said on Sunday.

Ejido Jesus Carranza, near the U.S. border, is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Ciudad Juarez and is a popular spot for picnickers from Juarez - across the border from El Paso, Texas.

. . . The men had been shot in the head after being tortured according to the agency’s report. Some had been burned, beaten and had eyes carved out.

The violence has already seeped across the border, and I predict it won't be long before we start seeing the same type of mass graves here in the U.S.

In the Country, No One Can Hear You Scream (Updated)

Repeating a comment from a reader on an earlier post, "in the country, no one can hear you scream." As many of you already know, an unprecedented wave of violence has swept over South Africa where bandits have targeted and killed numerous white farmers. It probably should be termed genocide. While generally ignored by the media at large, the Daily Mail had this report today:

A British engineer was murdered and his wife brutally beaten at their remote South African farm by robbers who took just £210 cash and a mobile phone.

Chris Preece, 54, who made his home there after ‘falling in love with the country’ was hacked to death in his kitchen by a gang with machetes.

His wife Felicity, 56, was stabbed and hit with a pole, fracturing her skull.
She survived a 12-hour wait for help by treating her own wounds.

The murder, on Saturday evening, is the latest in a spate of violent robberies in South Africa targeting relatively wealthy white farmers.

Mr Preece, originally from Southgate, north London, was attacked at about 7pm as he went to take his seven dogs for a walk at his farm near Ficksburg, on the Lesotho border.

The gang killed him, then attacked his wife.

‘Because the gang had cut the telephone wires and there is no mobile phone reception, she couldn’t get help,’ said friend and neighbour Gavin Hoole.

‘It was only the next morning, at around 7am, that anyone realised something was wrong.’

... Jeanne Preece, who is married to their son, said the couple, who have two daughters, were unaware there had been a murder and four robberies on local farms in the past month.

... Mr Preece's death is the latest in an alarming trend of brutal murders on remote farmsteads in post apartheid South Africa.

Since the country's first fully democratic elections in 1994, more than 3,000 white, mainly Afrikaans, farmers have been killed in their homes.

The so-called 'farm attacks' are part of the wave of criminality that has engulfed the country in recent years, something criminologist blame of a number of factors, including inept policing and widening social inequality.

But in the case of 'farm attacks' - which occur far from the crime-ravaged townships - academics also blame a breakdown in the traditional social contract between employer and employee.

Police research shows that the murders are normally carried out by drug-addicted, unemployed black men. Often they have some connection with the targeted farmstead.
Local police said the attack at Mr Preece's farm - called Fleur de Lys - is the fifth such attack, and the second murder, in the district over the past month.

While there are probably numerous security precautions that the Preeces could have taken but didn't, the fact is that living a normal life, you can't have your guard up all of the time. Particularly, if as suggested in the article, the attackers were familiar with the farm and, probably, the Preeces' schedule. I just want to note a few facts. First, isolation didn't save him. It could have cost his wife her life. It was 12 hours before anyone responded. Second, having dogs didn't save him. We don't know from the story if the dogs alerted the Preeces, but it was too late; or if the dogs failed to sense the intruders, or something else. It is possible that if the bandits were familiar with the farm, the dogs didn't recognize them as intruders.

Update: Some additional information on the attack from the Guardian:

Chris Preece, 54, stepped outside to investigate a power cut when he was attacked by three men with machetes. "Preece fled to the house, but the attackers chased after him and continued the assault," said police spokesman Phumelelo Dhlamini.

...  Preece's guard dogs are believed to have been poisoned after he took them out on Saturday night, according to the Volksblad newspaper. Preece became concerned when they did not return and was attacked soon after. His 56-year-old wife, Felicity, was stabbed several times and suffered a fractured skull. She is said to be in a stable condition in hospital.

Bicycle Repair

As we progress through our economic collapse, I notice more and more people using bicycles. And not the spandex wearing health nuts, but people obviously using bikes to commute or run errands. As fuel prices increase (and they will more than likely increase under the current administration),  more and more of us will be using bikes for short errands.

I recently had a problem with my bike--it developed a grinding noise while peddling. Taking apart the crank mechanism, I discovered that I needed a new one of these:

... a bracket bearing for the crank shaft. There are two--one on each side--one of which had completely burst apart. I had an older bike that I had kept for some spare parts, but it turned out that the parts I needed were incompatible. I bought a couple new bearing brackets, and kept the old one that was still good as a spare. However, it made me realize that there are certain spare parts that I need to set aside for repairing a bike beyond tires and tubes. Some parts will simply have to be scavanged or traded for, such as wheels, because buying extras would be prohibitively expensive. Casting about for advice on bicycling forums, I came across this one that seems to have some good comments as to standard parts to keep on hand.

DIY Geiger Counter

I was browsing through MakeZine's website the other day and came across this post (article, instructions, and video) on building your own Geiger counter. For those worried about nuclear warfare or accidents, and handy with a soldering gun, this may be a good project.

August 13, 1883 -- The Day the Earth Almost Died?

Instapundit linked to an an article from MIT Technology Review from October of last year that suggests that the Earth nearly collided with a large comet in 1883. The article states:

On 12th and 13th August 1883, an astronomer at a small observatory in Zacatecas in Mexico made an extraordinary observation. José Bonilla counted some 450 objects, each surrounded by a kind of mist, passing across the face of the Sun.

Bonilla published his account of this event in a French journal called L'Astronomie in 1886. Unable to account for the phenomenon, the editor of the journal suggested, rather incredulously, that it must have been caused by birds, insects or dust passing front of the Bonilla's telescope. ...

Today, Hector Manterola at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and a couple of pals, give a different interpretation. They think that Bonilla must have been seeing fragments of a comet that had recently broken up. This explains the 'misty' appearance of the pieces and why they were so close together.

But there's much more that Manterola and co have deduced. They point out that nobody else on the planet seems to have seen this comet passing in front of the Sun, even though the nearest observatories in those days were just a few hundred kilometers away.

That can be explained using parallax. If the fragments were close to Earth, parallax would have ensured that they would not have been in line with the Sun even for observers nearby. And since Mexico is at the same latitude as the Sahara, northern India and south-east Asia, it's not hard to imagine that nobody else was looking.

Manterola and pals have used this to place limits on how close the fragments must have been: between 600 km and 8000 km of Earth. ...

What's more, Manterola and co estimate that these objects must have ranged in size from 50 to 800 metres across and that the parent comet must originally have tipped the scales at a billion tons or more, that's huge, approaching the size of Halley's comet.

... Manterola and co end their paper by spelling out just how close Earth may have come to catastrophe that day. They point out that Bonilla observed these objects for about three and a half hours over two days. This implies an average of 131 objects per hour and a total of 3275 objects in the time between observations.

Each fragment was at least as big as the one thought to have hit Tunguska. Manterola and co end with this: "So if they had collided with Earth we would have had 3275 Tunguska events in two days, probably an extinction event."

However, not everyone is buying into this explanation. The "Bad Astronomy" blog at Discover Magazine had this to say:

Doing some simple math, the authors calculate the comet fragments were no closer than about 500 km (300 miles) from the Earth’s surface, and no farther than about 65,000 km (40,000 miles).

This right there is enough for me to be extremely skeptical of this idea. When a comet breaks up, it spreads out. Even when intact, the material surrounding a comet can be tens or even hundreds of thousands of kilometers across! Claiming that a comet broke apart, yet managed to constrain its pieces to volume of space less than a few thousand kilometers across strains credulity.

Mind you, Bonilla claimed to have seen these objects over the course of two days. That means they would’ve been stretched out along a path that was a million km long at least, yet so narrow that only one observatory on Earth saw them transit the Sun. That is highly unlikely.

Worse, the very fact that no one else saw anything makes this claim even less tenable. A comet, even one that’s broken up, can be very bright, and the closer it is to us the brighter it can be. I have personally seen a comet in broad daylight! Even if this purported comet couldn’t be seen during the day for some reason, at some point in the days or weeks before or after these observations, the comet should have been visible in the evening sky (or at least at dusk or dawn). Yet no one saw anything.

Worse than that, there were no meteor showers reported that day or night. Comets are basically giant snowballs peppered with dust and gravel. Every time they get near the Sun, some of that ice sublimates (turns from a solid into a gas), forming the fuzzy ball we associate with comets, but also releasing some of the embedded rocky material. When the Earth passes through this stuff, we get meteor showers as it burns up in our atmosphere.

A comet passing a few thousand klicks from the Earth would have generated a lot of meteors. It’s practically impossible for me to believe that one could get that close to us and not even be noticed, and not create a meteor shower that would have been practically biblical in size.

It’s not like there wouldn’t have been ammo for such a meteor shower. The authors of the new study calculate the sizes of the fragments given their distance and the size Bonilla reported. They find the fragments would have been a few dozen meters across to as large as a kilometer. If there were hundreds of objects this size, there would’ve been millions as small a few centimeters across. Objects that size make brilliant fireballs as they burn up in our atmosphere, and would’ve been visible during the day, even with the Sun shining. Again, no reports of any meteor storms, despite a comet being a few thousand kilometers away and a million kilometers long.

Also, the Earth is moving, and covers a lot of ground (OK, space) in a day. Having the Earth move at least 2.5 million km during that time, and never getting closer or farther than 500 – 65,000 km is too much to ask.

Building Structures Out of Shipping Containers

A story at the Daily Mail about building homes, apartment buildings, offices, etc., out of old shipping containers. 

With the demand for affordable housing on the rise across the country, some developers in cities like Detroit and Seattle have been using a truly outside-the-box thinking to come up with a solution to the problem: building condominiums out of discarded shipping containers.

About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet boxes move through U.S. ports every year, hauling everything from children’s toys to computers and chemicals.

In the past, when a container was retired from service in the shipping industry, it would end up discarded in a ship yard to be slowly consumed by rust. But now, the colourful steel boxes get a new lease on life by being transformed into apartments, art studios, office buildings and even restaurants.

HyBrid Architecture, based in Seattle, Washington, has been building housing from containers for nearly 10 years now and is credited with coining the term 'cargotecture' to describe this ‘green’ approach to construction, ABC News reported.

Homes and businesses pieced together out of the multicolored boxes which can be purchased for as little as $2,500 each have been springing up from coast to coast in recent years.

Why would anyone want to spend money to build more housing in Detroit, when they practically have the lowest housing prices in the U.S.?

More Looting in New York

(Full story here).

H.E.A.T. Camouflage

I haven't written too much on camouflage before, just citing a few articles about camouflage here. My thought is that if someone(other than as part of a military unit) is wondering around in full camouflage after a disaster, of any magnitude, they are simply asking for trouble. My other concern is that most camouflage is terrain specific, and its efficacy can change based on lighting and the type of lighting. 

For instance, I have some hunting gear that is in RealTree's AP (all purpose) pattern. It works great in a grassy area or area with lots of bare wood, but not so well in conifer forest or where there is a lot of green undergrowth. It also is better for sitting still, but less effective when moving because it has light colored highlights that tend to catch the eye when moving. Finally, again because of the light colored highlights, it isn't as effective at night. None of this is a big deal for most types of hunting (I primarily bought it for turkey hunting, and secondarily for deer hunting), but degrades the effectiveness of a particular camo pattern if, for some reason, you were trying to be inconspicuous during or after a period of natural or social upheaval.

Conversely, one of my sons has a Mossy-Oak jacket (which is mostly dark grays, dark browns, and dark greens) which seems to be very effective as a general pattern: because there are no light colors, it doesn't catch the eye when moving or in dim light, but there is enough of a difference to break up your outline. However, it might not be ideal for a desert environment.

My thoughts have always been to use the "grey man" approach--natural colors in your everyday clothes. Solid grey or brown are probably better, overall, than any particular camouflage pattern. Warrior Talk News recently had an article on this very topic--what they called "Hippy Earth Tone (H.E.A.T.) camouflage." It reported:

... The matter at hand arose this last weekend when we held the Small Unit Tactics class in Kingman, AZ. 

We had twenty guys attending. Some wore the very popular and effective Multicam camouflage. A couple of guys wore some derivatives of MARPAT, ACU, and various other "Green" camo. And we had several that were wearing civilian outdoor clothing, but in what I would term "muted earth tones". These were various shades of drab green, gray, brown and tan. Nothing blue or red - nothing white or black. And the tans were more brown than sand...so they were not "light".

This is not Urban camo to blend into groups. The objective is to sport a drab colored image based on shades of grey, brown, green, tan. Nothing blue...nothing red...nor any derivatives such as bluish grey or pinkish salmon. The idea is that the clothes blend into the woods/weeds, yet can go into the city as well. The wood/weeds takes precedence over the city in terms of colors.

Patterns would also be contraindicated unless there are plaid plants or stripped trees in your AO.

In any case we had students do a walk back from 100 to 350 yards as the other students watched them for contrast, effectiveness in blending with the area, and how easy it was to see them. Not scientific I suppose, but good enough for what our purposes where.
Anything moving is easy to see as nothing moves like a man. As well, a human head is distinctive and different from anything in nature. But aside from that what the class saw was that the Hippy Earthtones difused light and allowed the wearers to be nearly as "camouflaged" as the multicam wearing guys. Don't believe me? Ask they guys in class that saw what I am writing about.

The advantage of the Hippy Earthtones over the Multicam is this. If it is probable that one may need to go from rural weeds to city streets and back, the multicam would be contraindicated as while it would camouflage well in one zone, it would call attention to the wearer in another. The Hippy Earthtones would work well in both.

 The general report on the class similarly points out:

When they got back, we talked a bit about camouflage. The students had a variety of camo patterns on so Gabe had some examples to work with. Rather than camoflage, several students were wearing shirts and pants in browns, tans, and greens. These aren’t quite as good as camo patterns at hiding you out in the weeds, but they can be surprisingly close. Where they really shine is that you can dump your rifle and LBE and walk into a hotel or nice restaurant and not get a second look. In the insurgent fighter context, this can be as useful as being able to go unseen out in the wilderness. Gabe coined the acronym HEAT camoflage (Hippy EArth Tone) to describe this kind of setup.

Gabe sent a few downrange: one in Woodland MARPAT, one in Multicam, and two in HEAT camo. Even out at 300 yards, when they were standing up or walking along the bare dirt of the range, they were pretty obvious. When they kneeled or went prone, even on the bare range, it was a lot harder. Coming back they moved off to the right or left of the range, into some vegetation (sparse brush from hip to shoulder height). There they were still visible when moving, and fairly evident when standing, but everyone practically disappeared when they dropped down.

The MARPAT woodland was a bit dark for the environment. Some parts of the background it blended pretty well, but on others it was fairly obvious. The Multicam was probably the best overall. The two guys in HEAT camo did almost as well as the multicam, save for one guy’s very light colored (slightly off white) hat. Faces and hands could be quite visible, as where shadows on the front of their body when they leaned over while kneeling.

Frankly, a sniper veil would have been a simple solution to covering heads and faces.

New Photo

... well, not so new. I took it a while back while helping my son with a school project.

(c) 2012 The Docent

Argentina Fears Default

Argentina claims it faces defaulting on loans after a recent U.S. court decision requiring it to repay unpaid creditors from its 2001 default. (Full story here).

Number of Christians Fleeing Iraq Increasing Again

This article from Christian Today-Australia reports:

Christians have started fleeing Iraq in large numbers again, warns Canon Andrew White.

The 'Vicar of Bahdad' said in his latest update that the situation in Iraq has "really deteriorated".

"The violence is so terrible and once again we are seeing so many of our own people fleeing to Turkey and Lebanon," he said.

Gaza Strikes a Precursor for a Strike Against Iran? (Updated)

Jennifer Griffin, at Fox News, speculates on why Israel decided to strike at Hamas. She notes:

The conventional wisdom has long been that Iran, if attacked by Israel, would strike back using proxy forces such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, terror groups the Iranians have been arming with longer and longer missiles in recent years.
Those missiles, which include Fajr 5 rockets with a range of 45 miles, can reach both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from the Gaza Strip.

“Our problem is not our border with Gaza,” Israel’s Ambassador the United States Michael Oren told Fox News on Monday. “Among the rockets being fired at us are the Fajr 5 rockets, which come directly from Iran. We know that Hamas terrorists have trained with the Iranians -- there's a strong connection.”

. . . In March 2010, the Obama administration announced that it would provide $205 million to help Israel purchase up to 10 Iron Dome batteries. The House Armed Services Committee has authorized up to $680 million more to be spent on Iron Dome procurement for Israel over the next three years to protect Israeli cities.

Pentagon officials had hoped that the presence of a strong missile defense shield would give the Israelis some degree of security and deter the Israelis from striking Iran prematurely or unilaterally. Now it appears as if Israel is removing its most immediate rocket threat in the short term and testing Iran’s nearest proxy and regional alliances before deciding whether Iran’s nuclear program can be dealt a military blow.

In other words, the strikes against Gaza destroying Hamas' rockets and weapons, removes one of the deterrents to attacking Iran.

Update: From Business Insider:

Israel's eight-day Gaza offensive was a dry run for any future armed confrontation with Iran, U.S. and Israeli officials told The New York Times.

“In Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel was not confronting Gaza, but Iran,” Israeli ambassador to the U.S. States and military historian Michael B. Oren told the Times.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) employed F-16 fighter jets to drop bunker-busting bombs on underground tunnels as well as Apache helicopters and drones to hit more than 1,500 targets in Gaza.

The first strike of the conflict may have been Oct. 22 when fighter jets bombed an Iranian arms factory in Sudan. Israel has been mum about the strike, but everyone from Sudan to the U.N. believes four Israeli stealth jets targeted the factory because it was used to supply arms — including Fajr rockets like those fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — to Hamas in Gaza.

Learning and reducing the capabilities of Iran's surrogates — Hamas and (especially) Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — is important to Israel because those groups would contribute to the 200,000 rockets and missiles that could strike Israel during any military confrontation with Iran.

Bats Source of Mysterious Virus in Middle-East

From Livescience:

In June, a 60-year-old man checked into a hospital in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, with a mysterious illness. The man, who had acute pneumonia and failing kidneys, eventually died.

Now, the genetic sequencing of the virus behind his death suggests it was a new one, and it came from Asian bats. The findings, which were published Nov. 20 in the journal mBio, may help scientists understand what makes the mysterious virus so deadly.

"The virus is most closely related to viruses in bats found in Asia, and there are no human viruses closely related to it," said study co-author Ron Fouchier, of the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, in a statement. "Therefore, we speculate that it comes from an animal source."
In general, human illness from animal diseases has been on the rise, but bats are an especially deadly reservoir for viruses. In addition to harboring rabies, bats may have been the initial hosts of hemorrhagic fevers such as the Ebola virus and deadly brain fevers such as the Nipah virus, scientists say.

Since the first case was reported, two other people have fallen ill, including a man from London who was visiting neighboring Qatar and another man in Saudi Arabia.

(H/t Gates of Vienna)

Morsi Assumes Dictatorial Powers

Egyptian President Morsi has announced sweeping new powers:

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi assumed sweeping powers on Thursday, putting him on a collision course with the judiciary and raising questions about the country's democratic future.

The move, just a day after Morsi took diplomatic centerstage in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers, earned him the same derisive monicker of "new pharaoh" leveled at veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak before his ouster in a popular uprising last year.

"The president can issue any decision or measure to protect the revolution," according to a decree read out on television by presidential spokesman Yasser Ali.

"The constitutional declarations, decisions and laws issued by the president are final and not subject to appeal."

The move is a blow to the pro-democracy movement that toppled Mubarak last year, and raises concerns that Islamists will be further ensconced in power.

Nobel laureate and former U.N. atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei lashed out at the declaration, which effectively puts the president above judicial oversight.

"Morsi today usurped all state powers and appointed himself Egypt's new pharaoh. A major blow to the revolution that could have dire consequences," ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account.

Morsi also sacked prosecutor general Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, whom he failed to oust last month, appointing Talaat Ibrahim Abdallah to replace him, amid strong misgivings among the president's supporters about the failure to secure convictions of more members of the old regime.

Within minutes of the announcement, the new prosecutor was shown on television being sworn in.

No surprise for two reasons. First, Islamic culture is inherently autocratic. Second, Obama seems to like Morsi, and, well, we all know how much Obama likes dictators....

(H/t Weasel Zippers)

Eat Your Asparagus--Research Indicates It May Help With Diabetes

The Daily Mail has an article on some research indicating that asparagus (they used asparagus extract in the research) could help control blood-sugar levels. From the article:

To see if asparagus could help, scientists at the University of Karachi in Pakistan injected rats with chemicals to induce a diabetic state, with low levels of insulin and high blood sugar content.

They then treated half with an extract from the asparagus plant and the other half with an established anti-diabetic drug, called glibenclamide.

The rats were fed the asparagus extract in small or large doses every day for 28 days.
Blood tests were then carried out to measure changes in their diabetes.

The results, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, showed low levels of the asparagus suppressed blood sugar levels but did not improve insulin output.

Only high doses of the extract had a significant effect on insulin production by the pancreas, the organ which releases the hormone into the bloodstream.
The findings support earlier studies highlighting the benefits of asparagus.

One published in the British Medical Journal in 2006 showed asparagus triggered an 81 per cent increase in glucose uptake by the body’s muscles and tissues.

In a report on their findings the University of Karachi researchers said: ‘This study suggests asparagus extract exerts anti-diabetic effects.’ 

Bedazzler--DIY Non-Lethal Weapon

Want to make your own LED-Incapacitator? This site offers plans on how to do it. The designers write:

After attending a conference where the $1 million "sea-sick flashlight" (named "THE DAZZLER") was demonstrated by the US Dept. of Homeland Security, we decided to create our own version. For under $250, you can build your own dazzler and we've released the source code, schematics and PCB files to make it easy. A great Arduino project for people who really like blinking LEDs. We also added in a mode selection so you can put it into some pretty color-swirl modes, great for raves and parties!

Economist Hans-Werner Sinn Recommends that Greece and Spain Exit Euro

(Full interview here). Not only might it save their economies, but making their products more competitive, but it might also save their sovereignty.

Europe Plans on Regulating "Shadow Banking"

Europe is preparing to regulate so-called "shadow banking." (See this article from Der Spiegel, and this article from CNBC). The articles don't do a very good job of defining what they mean by "shadow banking." Wikipedia provides a probably oversimplified explanation:

The shadow banking system is the collection of non-bank financial intermediaries that provide services similar to traditional commercial banks. It includes entities such as hedge funds, money market funds and structured investment vehicles (SIV). Investment banks may conduct much of their business in the shadow banking system (SBS), but most are not SBS institutions themselves.

. . . Shadow institutions typically do not have banking licenses and don't take deposits like a depository bank and therefore are not subject to the same regulations. Complex legal entities comprising the system include hedge funds, structured investment vehicles (SIV), special purpose entity conduits (SPE), money market funds, repurchase agreement (repo) markets and other non-bank financial institutions.

Shadow banking institutions are typically intermediaries between investors and borrowers. For example, an institutional investor like a pension fund may be willing to lend money, while a corporation may be searching for funds to borrow. The shadow banking institution will channel funds from the investor(s) to the corporation, profiting either from fees or from the difference in interest rates between what it pays the investor(s) and what it receives from the borrower.

The Der Spiegel article notes, however, that:

At the moment, very little is known about many of the shadow companies. Precisely because they remained largely unregulated for so long, there is no government agency that could order them to provide information. "It's a classic chicken-and-egg problem," says Andresen. Without regulation there can be no data, and without data there can be no regulation.

Even the question of who should handle data collection in the future has triggered a dispute between politicians and regulators. It isn't easy to bring together opinions from the 20 countries whose governments meet regularly at the G-20 summits of leading industrial and emerging economies. To get the mammoth problem under control, FSB staff members have compiled a "world map of shadow banks," as Andresen calls the puzzle-like project.

Fifty different types of companies have been identified, and the FSB now intends to focus on the roughly 10 most common types. Regulators suspect that these companies alone have assets totalling $20 trillion.

But the more detailed the research is, the more difficult it gets. For instance, Germany's financial regulator BaFin called for the broad documentation and regulation of hedge funds, only to be blocked by Great Britain and the United States -- not surprisingly, given that many of these funds are headquartered in London and New York. Now only hedge funds that engage in real credit transactions will be subject to greater scrutiny in the future, a group that makes up less than a third of the industry.

In other words, the financial transactions are disparate enough that it is difficult to categorize and define that fits into the "shadow banking." Which begs the question of whether they could effectively regulate the industries.

However, an even more basic question is why they need to be regulated. Is this simply an issue of the Eurocrats offended that some businesses have escaped their regulatory grasp? The CNBC article states:

A report by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on Sunday appeared to confirm fears among policymakers that shadow banking is set to thrive, beyond the reach of a regulatory net tightening around traditional banks and banking activities.

The FSB, a task force from the world's top 20 economies, also called for greater regulatory control of shadow banking.

"The FSB is of the view that the authorities' approach to shadow banking has to be a targeted one," the group wrote in a report, noting the current lax regulation of the sector.

"The objective is to ensure that shadow banking is subject to appropriate oversight and regulation to address bank-like risks to financial stability," it said.

The Der Spiegel article also mentions:

After the financial crisis of 2008, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said that there could be no "blind spots" on the map of financial market regulation. But while more and more laws were passed to control banks, regulation of the shadow banks is only just beginning.

The man who is supposed to bring about the necessary change works in an office tower far away from major financial centers. When Svein Andresen broods over how he can best go about taming the wild masters of money, he sees the Black Forest through his office window. The level-headed Norwegian is the secretary general of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), which is housed at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, the umbrella organization of the world's central banks.

The FSB is intended to avert a repeat of disasters like the 2008 crisis. "For years, governments and regulatory agencies paid too little attention to financial institutions outside the world of banking," says Andresen. Now he wants to bring order to the chaotic world of shadow banks. But it's a slow process.

The "sin" of the financial crises was allowing commercial banks to act like investment banks. This seems to be a push to regulate simply for the sake of regulation.

The WSJ Reviews "The Second Nuclear Age"

The end of the Cold War brought with it a sense that the threat of nuclear war had also ended. A laudable hope, but unfortunately not true. In fact, the Wall Street Journal review of "The Second Nuclear Age" makes clear that the threat of nuclear war--somewhere in the world--may actually be increasing. The relevant portion:

The author presents detailed case studies on East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East to bolster his argument that the multipolar nuclear world is already changing the military strategies of regional powers in significant ways and to show that American national strategy—still focused on nonproliferation and lacking an understanding of the new nuclear dynamics—is lagging behind.

His analysis of the role of nuclear weapons in the India-Pakistan rivalry is disturbing and illuminating. The two sides haven't used their weapons, but their arsenals have changed their military and political strategies in ways that make the region more explosive and crisis prone. Pakistan, unable to compete in conventional weapons with its larger and wealthier neighbor, is expanding the quantity, upgrading the quality and diversifying the designs of its arsenal. India, meanwhile, is investing heavily in capabilities that would allow it to spot Pakistani preparations for a nuclear strike, possibly to pre-empt with force.

. . . The author's own sense of the dynamics of a multipolar nuclear world is sometimes less than complete. He tries, for example, to analyze the impact of a nuclear Iran on the Middle East by confining his analysis to Israel, the United States and Iran. Missing are the inevitable and serious effects as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and other regional powers respond to the new situation.

Even so, Mr. Bracken's view is a powerful one. It holds little comfort for theorists of international relations, whatever their orientation. Liberals will be appalled by his picture of a future in which widespread nuclear weapons impede the growth of the law-based order they seek. Nuclear weapons embody traditional ideas of state sovereignty; a world in which they drive strategic decisions and political arrangements is one that won't be guided by international law and organized by liberal institutions. If you have a nuclear weapon, the United Nations and the International Criminal Court can't make you do anything you really don't want to do.

A Couple Recent Photos

(c) 2012 The Docent

Just a couple recent photos of mine. No filters or color editing.

(c) 2012 The Docent

Free Downloads from "If It Hits The Fan"

The Daily Survivor blog has a link to this post at the "If It Hits the Fan" blog (IIHF) listing new additions to his survival library. He has added all three parts to the U.S. Army Special Forces Medical Handbook, the Texas Rainwater Harvesting Manual, the military M16 Technical Manual, and the Glock Armorer's Manual. He has some other resources that are worth checking out as well.

Famine (Update)

A couple articles I've read lately started me thinking of famine, and whether we could face famine here in the United States. 

Today I saw that Zero Hedge (h/t Weasel Zippers) had posted a couple charts showing that the demand for food is increasing, while the amount of arable land per person is declining. Since the supply of food is directly proportional to the amount of arable land, what we are seeing are classic supply and demand data that indicates demand is increasing while supply is decreasing. This, of course, pushes the intersection (i.e., the price) upward. Food is simply going to get more expensive.

A few days ago, I saw this New York Times article about the Chinese famine of 1958-1962, which, conservatively, killed 36 million. (I'm old enough to remember parents guilting their kids into eating all their food because there were "children starving in China"). Sadly, like the Soviet Famine in the 30's, the Chinese famine was the result of government policies, not a change in weather or spread of disease. The NYT article explains:

In Mao’s China, the coercive power of the state penetrated every corner of national life. The rural population was brought under control by a thorough collectivization of agriculture. The state could then manage grain production, requisitioning and distributing it by decree. Those who tilled the earth were locked in place by a nationwide system of household registration, and food coupons issued to city dwellers supplanted the market. The peasants survived at the pleasure of the state.

The Great Leap Forward that Mao began in 1958 set ambitious goals without the means to meet them. A vicious cycle ensued; exaggerated production reports from below emboldened the higher-ups to set even loftier targets. Newspaper headlines boasted of rice farms yielding 800,000 pounds per acre. When the reported abundance could not actually be delivered, the government accused peasants of hoarding grain. House-to-house searches followed, and any resistance was put down with violence.

Meanwhile, since the Great Leap Forward mandated rapid industrialization, even peasants’ cooking implements were melted down in the hope of making steel in backyard furnaces, and families were forced into large communal kitchens. They were told that they could eat their fill. But when food ran short, no aid came from the state. Local party cadres held the rice ladles, a power they often abused, saving themselves and their families at the expense of others. Famished peasants had nowhere to turn.

. . . The result was starvation on an epic scale. By the end of 1960, China’s total population was 10 million less than in the previous year. Astonishingly, many state granaries held ample grain that was mostly reserved for hard currency-earning exports or donated as foreign aid; these granaries remained locked to the hungry peasants. “Our masses are so good,” one party official said at the time. “They would rather die by the roadside than break into the granary.”

 In Cody Lundin's book, When All Hell Breaks Loose, he mentions that the famine led to infanticide and cannibalism, where "[d]esperate families swapped each other's children to eat, thus avoiding having to eat their kin." (Id. at 213).

However, lest anyone think I'm picking on China, Lundin's book briefly describes great famines recorded throughout history, from all around the world. Cannibalism and infanticide factored into several of them. For instance, Lundin mentions the Great Famine of 1315-1322 in Europe (just decades before the Black Death) where "[b]ad weather [actually, an extended period of cooler, wetter weather] and crop failure caused the death of millions of people by starvation, disease, infanticide, and cannibalism." (Id. at 218).

There is also the Great Potato Famine of Ireland in 1845-1849, caused by the spread of potato blight which destroyed the staple food crop relied upon by the Irish. "The combination of crop disease and politics [i.e., by the British government] caused the death of 1.5 million people by starvation, cannibalism, and disease." (Id. at 218).

The 1930's Dust Bowl of the United States was caused by the worst drought of the 20th Century, resulting in massive dust storm that caused severe health problems (mostly respiratory) and destroyed crops and killed livestock. It is unknown how many people died as a result, but Lundin has a poignant story of his own grandparents' struggle to find enough food to survive. (Id. at 211-12).

The Soviet Famine of 1932-1934 was caused by Stalin's policy of forcing peasants onto collective farms, which resulted in grain production falling by 40%. Total numbers dead from the famine is unknown, but estimated as to 5 to 8 million people. (The actual death toll is much higher--we know that Stalin killed tens of millions of his own people).

Nigeria, in 1967-1969, saw a famine caused by civil war that killed 1 million people, and left another 3.5 million suffering from malnutrition.

In North Korea, 1994-1998, a combination of reduced food subsidies from Russia and China, effects of collective farming, flooding, drought, and government corruption "caused an estimated 2 to 3 million people to die of starvation, disease, and cannibalism." (Id. 213).

And this list by Lundin barely scratches the surface of the famines, both widespread and localized, that have happened in just the past couple of hundred of years. However, it is illustrative that famine can be caused by one or a combination of war, changing weather (i.e., too wet or too dry), disease, or simple government incompetence.

Obviously, I cannot predict when and where a famine could occur. Modern farm production is heavily reliant on petroleum, not only for fuel for running the tractors, harvesters, and other equipment, but also for fertilizer, and gathering and distributing the food to the market. A sudden spike in fuel prices and/or drop in availability, combined with an inept government response (such as imposing price quotas) could result in food shortages in the United States and elsewhere. Because modern farming relies on only a small number of varieties of wheat and other grains, it is easily possible that a crop disease could wipe out significant amount of the crops.We've already seen government sponsored stupidity in pushing ethanol production result in a large number of farms switching to growing corn for ethanol production, instead of food grains. This has pushed up prices for grain and for feed for cattle and other animals.

There is little the common person can do to combat the causes of a famine. All a person can do is to store some extra food away ... and hope and pray it isn't stolen or confiscated.

Update: The Daily Mail has a brief article and series of photos of the American Dust Bowl.

Update (Nov. 21, 2012): Another book review of Tombstone, describing the Chinese Famine in greater detail.

The BioLite Stove

My son pointed me to this article at Boys Life about the BioLite stove which converts the heat from a small wood fire (which you can use for cooking) to electricity to run a small fan (to force air into the fire) and recharge cell phones, GPS devices, etc.

Here is the link to the manufacturer's website.

"Tribal America"

Mark Steyn has a different take on the racial overtones of this most recent election. He writes:

. . . one of the most striking features of election-night analysis was the lightly worn racial obsession. On Fox News, Democrat Kirsten Powers argued that Republicans needed to deal with the reality that America is becoming what she called a “brown country.” Her fellow Democrat Bob Beckel observed on several occasions that if the share of the “white vote” was held down below 73 percent Romney would lose. In the end, it was 72 percent and he did. Beckel’s assertion — that if you knew the ethnic composition of the electorate you also knew the result — turned out to be correct.

This is what less enlightened societies call tribalism: For example, in the 1980 election leading to Zimbabwe’s independence, Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU-PF got the votes of the Ndebele people while Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF secured those of the Shona — and, as there were more Shona than Ndebele, Mugabe won.

Steyn doesn't question that this demographic shift is occurring, but instead questions why it is occurring, and at such a dramatic pace. He notes:

According to the Census, in 1970 the “Non-Hispanic White” population of California was 78 percent. By the 2010 census, it was 40 percent. Over the same period, the 10 percent Hispanic population quadrupled and caught up with whites.

That doesn’t sound terribly “natural” does it? If one were informed that, say, the population of Nigeria had gone from 80 percent black in 1970 to 40 percent black today, one would suspect something rather odd and unnatural had been going on. Twenty years ago, Rwanda was about 14 percent Tutsi. Now it’s just under 10 percent. So it takes a bunch of Hutu butchers getting out their machetes and engaging in seven-figure genocide to lower the Tutsi population by a third. But, when the white population of California falls by half, that’s “natural,” just the way it is, one of those things, could happen to anyone.

Steyn argues that government policy is the reason behind this shift in demographics, and that it will be another nail in the coffin of our country. In other words, if demographics are destiny, then our destiny may well be to become another Latin American country.

Republicans think they’re importing hardworking immigrants who want a shot at the American Dream; the Democrats think they’re importing clients for Big Government. The Left is right: Just under 60 percent of immigrants receive some form of welfare. I see the recent Republican proposals for some form of amnesty contain all sorts of supposed safeguards against gaming the system, including a $525 application fee for each stage of the legalization process. On my own recent visit to a U.S. Immigration office, I was interested to be told that, as a matter of policy, the Obama administration is now rubberstamping all “fee waiver” requests for “exceptional hardship” filed by members of approved identity groups. And so it will go for all those GOP safeguards. While Canada and Australia compete for high-skilled immigrants, America fast-tracks an unskilled welfare class of such economic benefit to their new homeland they can’t even afford a couple of hundred bucks for the necessary paperwork.

It’s hardly their fault. If you were told you could walk into a First World nation and access free education, free health care, free services in your own language, and have someone else pay your entrance fee, why wouldn’t you? So, yes, Republicans should “moderate” their tone toward immigrants, and de-moderate their attitude to the Dems who suckered the GOP all too predictably. Decades of faintheartedness toward some of the most destabilizing features of any society, including bilingualism (take it from a semi-Belgian Canadian), have brought the party to its date with destiny.

An Asteroid Impact Simulator

(Link here).

Some Lessons from the Petreaus Investigation

This article explores the privacy implications of the Petreaus investigation, including how easy it is for authorities to search and review emails. The author concludes:

The upside of this: It is easy to discover the identity of anonymous emailers unless you use a program to scramble your unique ISP address (HMA! Pro VPN is one) or you browse the net through a packet-scrambling service like Tor. Even then, you're vulnerable every time you open a document or a program, because it might contain code that alerts a computer somewhere else that you'd performed an action. Obviously, every ISP address associated with a unique computer is easily obtainable through a subpoena, so emailing anything sensitive from your personal computer leaves you vulnerable. If you send the emails from a public computer or through a wi-fi service used by a hotel or business, the government can figure out your identity by cross-referencing other information they can obtain with a warrant or subpoena too.

And what about text messages?

The good news is that most carriers don't keep the content of them for very long, but they keep the transactional records for years. And unless you wipe clean your iPhone or Android about 5 times over, the FBI is probably going to be able to recover your conversations from your own internal storage. If the government gets an order to monitor your phone in real-time, your only recourse is to use a commercially available text encryption program like Wickr or SMSEnrcrypt or TextSecure. It is also difficult to prevent real-time monitoring of your location, even if you turn that feature off.

FEMA/NYC Covering Up The Number of Dead from Sandy?

The bloggers at Suicide Girls (h/t Instapundit) have uncovered some evidence of a high school on Staten Island being used as an emergency morgue and suggest that the death toll was much higher than officially reported. They write:

As with any story that spreads through a tight-knit community, especially in a disaster, there are inconsistencies and friends-of-friends third and fourth-hand accounts to rely on. Some say the flood victims, which rumor has it are to be found within the school, broke into the premises to seek shelter from the rising waters or the cold, only to meet with tragedy. Others claim that the bodies were found elsewhere and the school was used because the nearby Staten Island University Hospital’s morgue, with a capacity of no more than 50, could not handle the intake.

Rumors are natural, but this isn’t sensational gossip.

Earlier in the day, a New York City Housing Authority administrator [name withheld] at the South Beach housing development told us how her friend, a nurse, had been relocated to Midland after her hospital in Manhattan was evacuated. When we inquired specifically about the rumored school-cum-morgues, she said she could confirm that the school had been used as a morgue, and that the actual death toll was much higher. When we tracked down her friend, the nurse, she declined our request for comment. The NYC Housing Authority administrator later recanted her assertion over the phone, after telling us she had gone out to dinner with Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, and that she now accepted the official death toll of 18. However, the rumor was subsequently corroborated by an Egbert Middle School teacher, who wishes to remain anonymous. When questioned by us, she confirmed that the school wouldn’t open Monday morning because it was being used as a temporary morgue.

 It may just be rumor and innuendo. If nothing else, it shows that the residents of Staten Island are not happy with their predicament and the government's response.

Booby Trapped Ammunition

The Truth About Guns warns that booby-trapped ammunition is spreading through the battlefields of the Middle-East, and could show up in loose foreign rounds sometimes found at gun shows.

More Evidence That the Feds Purposefully Armed the Sinaloas

The Truth About Guns has followed the Fast and Furious debacle for a long time, and has noted information indicating that the Federal government intentionally was assisting the Sinaloas cartel:

But there’s new evidence putting Uncle Sam and the narco-terrorists are in bed together. Check out this revelation from Revista Contralinea [via wired.com] . . .

The testimony of a Mexican hitman turned government witness has revealed some astonishing details of life inside Mexico’s criminal underworld. Most astonishing of all: claims that cartel assassins obtained guns from the U.S. Border Patrol.

According to Mexican magazine Revista Contralinea, the testimony comes from a protected government witness and former hitman, who cooperated in the prosecution of a Sinaloa Cartel accountant by the Mexican Attorney General’s Office.

The testimony details a series of battles fought by a group of cartel members attempting to drive out rival gangsters from territory in Mexico’s desert west. To do it, the group sought weapons from the U.S., including at least 30 WASR-10 rifles — a variant of the AK-47 —allegedly acquired from Border Patrol agents.

This is the first time we’ve heard of the CPB selling/providing guns to goons. But it’s hardly surprising. The entire border region is awash with billions of narco-dollars. Cash money. Why wouldn’t U.S. government employees put their kids through college by turning a blind eye, once?

More than that, they may have simply been doing their job. If the ATF was happy to allow indeed subsidize straw purchases from U.S. gun stores to Mexican drug thugs, why wouldn’t the CPB get a similar memo from the Powers That Be?

We’ve already highlighted the DEA’s money laundering ops (as reported by The New York Times) and the testimony of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the captured Sinaloa cartel’s “logistics coordinator” who claims he was on the CIA’s payroll, and that the fed’s F&F guns were smuggled to his compadres with Uncle Sam’s blessing.

Not to mention Operation Castaway, the ATF gun running program channeling firearms to Honduras. Or the “grenade walker” scandal, wherein the ATF captured and released a known IED maker, who headed straight for Mexico to continue his explosive fabrication.

None of these black bag jobs are enough to topple the Prez. Obviously. But there is a pattern of government duplicity and cooperation with the world’s worst criminal conspiracy that involves enormous corruption. Contributing to the death of tens of thousands of Mexicans and a U.S. Border Patrol Agent named Brian Terry.

The Feds (whatever alphabet agency is involved) has made a deal with the devil. And when you deal with the devil, there is always hell to be paid. While the obvious price in this case was the death of Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican nationals, the other price is that turning a blind eye has allowed this (and perhaps other) cartels to expand and consolidate networks in the U.S.

Why Oppression Alone Won't Lead to Revolt

From the Dissident Frogman (h/t Instapundit):

Some of you believe that societal collapse or civil war are coming soon hereafter, and advocate stocking supplies and ammunitions for the conflict they see ahead.

Truly, there isn’t such things as too much food and weapons, and yes, collapse and conflict could come to America. Yet it is not written.

The various flavors of Social Democrats who run Europe (into the ground, admittedly), and share so many features and aspirations with Obama have learned the mistakes of the less subtle autocrats who preceded them. If France can teach you one thing, it’s that Obama will never bleed you dry or push you beyond the threshold of revolt, only to the nearest edge of it: you are now more likely to bleed from a thousand cuts over a thousand years than to get a quick, if violent, resolution to the relentless assaults against your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness—snarky Libertarians who opted to let Obama squat in the Oval Office unopposed on the deluded notion that "it doesn’t matter" and will bring the fall of Leviathan sooner, may want to take notice.

Even the French have not yet managed to completely plunder and ruin their comparatively much weaker economy, and the good Lord knows they’ve been trying for the best of the last 80 years or so.

Just like in France, the rates of taxes, duties and fees unleashed upon the good folks of the US of A will not only augment, they will also metastasize over an incredibly varied and ever expanding range of products and services, in addition to your income and profits. You will suffocate under an unrelenting onslaught of new regulations, red tape and audits by a growing army of government agencies and bureaucrats all tasked with the mission of controlling that nothing passes through their nets, and punishing you ruthlessly for anything that does.

And still: you will live through it, and you will live well enough—for a given value of "well"—to never really have a legally and morally unquestionable motive to rise up in arms and go full scale de oppresso liber on the tyrant. This will not be, as many of you imagine when they think about France, North Korea only with more cheese, wine and broads who don’t shave their armpits. Instead, you will find yourself in a multi-generations limbo of "too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards"—as, ironically, a Libertarian once said.

Just like in France, this will turn you into a depressed, cynical and pessimistic people, until they finally manage to kill your spirit whole, and nearly everybody is on the dole.

That’s when they’ve won. They do not need to kill you, they just have to break you.

Electronic Dead Drop

One of the articles I read about the Petreaus affair had the following interesting tidbit:

Petraeus and his mistress used an email trick favored by terrorists and drug dealers to hide their messages to each other, storing them as drafts in an account they could both access, instead of sending traceable messages to each others’ inboxes.

Clever. I don't know that I would have thought of that.

TTAG Posts Its November Gun Contest List

A chance to win a free gun or knife! The Truth About Guns has published a list of various contests you can enter for a firearm, knife, or some other prizes. So, enter once, enter often.

Was Benghazi Attack to Free Prisoners?

Was Obama running a secret CIA prison? From Klein Online:

Did Paula Broadwell, the alleged mistress of ex-CIA Director David Petraeus, reveal a secret CIA detention center in Benghazi during a public speech she gave last month?

Broadwell, a former counterterror operative, co-authored a bestselling biography of Petraeus. She discussed the book during a keynote speech on Oct. 26 at a University of Denver alumni symposium. The speech is available in full on YouTube.

During a question and answer session, Broadwell was asked about the September 11 attacks against the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

She stated: “Now I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually had taken a couple of Libya militia members prisoner. And they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that’s still being vetted.”

The existence of a U.S. prison or CIA detention center in Benghazi would be a new development in the debate surrounding the attacks there. The information does not appear to be publicly known.

The article goes on to note that the CIA has denied any such facility. Of course. The facility that was attacked wasn't a CIA facility, but a State Department facility. So maybe the question should be, "was Obama running a secret State Department prison?"

Japan Enters Another Recession

Bloomberg reports:

Japan’s economy contracted in the third quarter at the fastest pace since last year’s earthquake as exports slumped and consumer spending slid.

Gross domestic product fell an annualized 3.5 percent in the three months through September, after a revised 0.3 percent gain the previous quarter, the Cabinet Office said in Tokyo today. The median of 23 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 3.4 percent drop. Barclays Plc and Societe Generale SA are among those forecasting another decline this quarter, meeting the textbook definition of a recession.

Gaza Groups Shoot Over 100 Rockets Into Israel in Past 24 Hours

From the Jerusalem Post:

Israel will not hesitate to launch a major IDF operation against Gaza-based terrorist factions if necessary, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Sunday – after some 100 rockets hit southern Israel in 24 hours.

Rockets wounded three people in Sderot during a barrage fired to coincide with the morning commute to work. One man was moderately wounded in his car by shrapnel and flying glass.

Talk of Secession

The White House website apparently allows people to petition. One of the petitions is for Louisiana to be allowed to peacefully leave the union. Only a little over 9,000 signatures currently.

This Is Going to Get Out of Hand...

Syrian forces have sent two shells into the Golan Heights the last couple of days, and Israel finally responded with a guided missile--the first time Israel has fired on Syria since 1973.

The situation is going to deteriorate, although the EU lacks the resources to effectively intervene, and I don't see the U.S. doing much either. (Besides, France and U.S. will probably be too involved in Mali). Thus, the day may come when the regional powers, Turkey and Iran, start committing troops. And when that's done, and they have a large military force sitting in Syria, what could they do then?

Incompatibility

In his classic work, Life After Doomsday, Bruce Clayton recognized that there is an inevitable cross-over between prepping and politics. Clayton's concern, when he published his book, was that survivalists needed to oppose implementation of the MX missile system which would have put ICBMs on mobile launching platforms so they could be moved around. His reasoning was that such a system would, in the event of a nuclear attack, require the Soviets to saturate certain areas with nuclear weapons in order to destroy all of the mobile launch platforms. Whatever its strategic value, it would have put far more fallout into the air, and made it harder for civilians to survive and recover after such an attack. Consequently, he encouraged survivalists to get involved in political issues that would impact their survival.

Sandy and, earlier, Katrina, pointed out some stark areas where politics and government have a direct impact on surviving and recovering from disasters. Instapundit linked to this piece today from the Small Dead Animals blog that is illustrative:

FEMA, while it is a clusterfrig of titanic proportions, could not cause this much misery on its own. Although they FAILED to have emergency generators at key fuel distribution points (read gas stations) and although they FAILED to have any kind of plan to move food and fuel to the affected areas, and although they FAILED to even have a forward based supply of bottled water and ran out last Friday, even these gold plated MORONS couldn't have frigged things up this badly alone.

Do you want to know why the power is STILL off on Long Island, Davenport? Read this here: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Sandy-LIPA-Outages-Power-Long-Island-Defense-Military-178115341.html

In it you will find reference to a report from 2006, SIX YEARS AGO, which found that Long Island Power Authority had not done the basic maintenance required to secure the power grid from weather damage. The maintenance they're talking about here is tree cutting mostly, and replacing bad power poles.

I lived in New York in the 1990's. I could have written that report. The f-ing power went off every time it snowed because they didn't cut trees and the trees ripped the lines down. They also didn't plow the roads, but that's a story for another day.

You want to know why they don't cut the f-ing trees Davenport? It isn't because they are stupid, it isn't because they don't know, it isn't because private enterprise is inherently corrupt, it isn't even because union workers are a bunch of rent-seeking layabouts. Its because every time they go to cut down a tree, some local Greenies get up a petition or a court order to make them stop. So they stop. So the trees break and knock down the power lines. Same thing all over the North East until you get up into snow country, where even the f-ing tree huggers know better.

Well -this- time it all came home to roost the same day, and every overhanging branch from New Jersey to Connecticut took out a line.

But don't get me wrong, there's a ton of corruption and scamming going on too. Paying off inspectors, hockey tickets for town council, that sort of thing. That's why all those flooded switching stations were within reach of a flood in the first place, because the money to move them was skimmed off by graft. That's why FEMA didn't have any forward located stuff, because it all either vanished or was never there to start with except on paper.

But now that there's been a disaster the LIPA wankers are screaming for crews. And they aren't getting them. You know why Davenport? Because volunteer crews from as far away as Florida showed up Monday -before- the storm and cooled their heels until Friday, didn't get any assignments because they WERE NOT UNION, and then those volunteer crews went the hell back home.

And FEMA didn't say jack about it, did they? Nor did anyone else. One phone call from Barack "The Golfer" Obama to the head of the union could have fixed that. Just one, single phone call. Didn't get made, did it? He made a speech on Wednesday and then flew to Vegas.

Some of the people displaced by the flooding are still in tents. FEMA is supposed to find or make housing for these people, its been a week and a half now, and they are in tents. Looked out the window today? Its cold. People are going to -die- in tents this time of year. It is reported today that some of these cold tent dwelling people started calling the news media, and the FEMA types running the camps started confiscating cameras and refusing to charge up cell phones. No power, they said.

The only organizations in this whole farce that showed up like they meant it have been churches. Not seeing much of that covered in the MSM are we?

But the crowning touch Davenport, the cherry on top of it all that just makes it all the more outrageous and mind numbing is that New Yorkers voted for MORE of it on Tuesday. More graft. More incompetence. More better and bigger Big Government. Gimme my Obama phone.

Say, d'ya think LIPA and ConEd will be laying off because of Obamacare? I bet they will. I bet they lay of a thousand guys right before January first.

I prophesy this: until people like YOU, Davenport, stop actively sabotaging everyone who's trying to make our civilization work, there's going to be ever-increasing numbers of people dying of exposure in tents waiting for help from Big Brother that never comes. I also predict that the ones who survive are going to be p1ssed.

The liberals, the tree-huggers, the big government types, those obsessed with identity politics--they and their believes are incompatible with prepping. These people are more dangerous than nuclear weapons or an intense solar flare or worldwide pandemic. You survival planning should include voting or, given the opportunity, running against these type of people.

Fall Colors

A recent photo of mine:

(c) 2012 - The Docent

The Mayans and Climate Change

The theory that changes to climate (specifically drought) may have caused, or been a significant factor, in the collapse of Mayan civilization has been around a while. The Daily Mail reports on some new research into the matter:

According to findings published in the November issue of Science, anthropologists have found evidence to support the idea that radically altered weather patterns led to a long dry spell that triggered a decline in agricultural productivity eventually fueling social fragmentation and political collapse.

Rather than being man made, scientists attribute these alterations to the combined effects of El Niño events and changes in the northeast and southeast equatorial winds known as the intertropical convergence zone.

What? It wasn't their SUVs?

 

Anthropologist Douglas Kennett's team came to this conclusion from studying the chemical composition of stalagmites in caves that indicate relatively wet periods versus dry periods. 

They pulled a 22 inch stalagmite from deep within the cave and using its chemical record to guide the way found that there were droughts lasting decades between the years 200 to 1100 B.C.

Those dates coincide with periods of upheaval and hardship in Mayan history.

. . . The worst drought from 1020 to 1100 B.C. coincides with the accepted end of Mayan culture itself.

Kennett added that the greatest periods of rainfall were in line with eras that Mayan culture thrived from 450 to 660 B.C. and the proliferation of their greatest cities.

4.3 Earthquake in Kentucky

The size of the earthquake is not what is significant (it is, after all, a relatively small one), but that it is near the New Madrid fault. (Full story here).

Government Workers Hoarding "Free" Gas

CBS New York has discovered that NYC employees are hoarding gas meant for "first responders."

As millions of drivers alternate days and run on fumes, CBS 2 has uncovered a disturbing loophole for a privileged few.

An exclusive investigation discovered city employees getting free gas — originally meant for first responders.

There were cars getting fueled up. A woman was spotted putting two gas cans into her trunk. There were long lines.

They seem like scenes from a typical gas station, right?

Well, not quite. They were taking place in the parking lot at the World’s Fair Marina on Friday.

It was a fueling station, not only for first responders and NYC vehicles, but also, it seems, for the personal vehicles of any city employee.

And the gas was free!

“It’s a great break for us,” FDNY administrator Maria Mercado said.

The gas is delivered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in huge tanker trucks. Drivers roll up and an attendant immediately fills up the tank without ever taking a dime.

These people should be tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

Another reason not to trust government in an emergency.

"Food Security 101"

An article by Rowena Aldridge at Backwoods Magazine setting out some basic tips on more efficiently using and storing food. Since one of my concerns is having sufficient protein in food storage, one of the tips I appreciated was on processing and storing ground beef:

Now here's the way to get the most — and I'm not kidding — from a ground beef windfall. Let's assume you've gotten a great deal and purchased 10 pounds of hamburger.

Usually, the first step in any ground beef recipe is "brown the meat." Do you know how long it takes to brown that much ground meat? So we're going to cut some corners. I guarantee you won't notice the difference.

Start with your 10 pounds of ground meat (which can be a mix of meats if you prefer). Put it all in a big stock pot, cover with as much water as you can reasonably put in the pot, plus a net onion bag full of veggie trimmings and a few herbs. Then boil. You heard me. Boil. Stir it from time to time and break up the meat as you do. Boil it as long as you can stand it. Eventually you'll look at it and think, "hmmm, that looks done." At that point, take it off the stove and let it cool down a bit, then put it in the fridge to cool completely.

I recommend boiling the meat instead of browning because it not only saves time, but you will end up with broth. You don't get broth when you brown meat, at least not without adding another time-consuming step. Since you're going to season this meat later, it doesn't matter that you boiled it. The seasoning gives it the characteristic flavor of the dish in question, and you have converted both the broth and the meat to very low-fat foods.

If you do this process late in the afternoon you can take some of the meat for dinner — tacos, sloppy joes — use your imagination. After that, put the pot of cooked meat in the fridge overnight. Now you get to sleep through the whole cooling process.

When it's cool, skim the fat off the top of the broth. Strain out the ground meat and set it aside (covered and in the fridge is good). Reheat the broth to boiling, ladle it into jars, and process it in your pressure canner according to the manual and the USDA instructions for processing meat broth.

While the jars are in the canner you can start working on the meat. Divide the cooked ground meat into portions that are the right size for your family's needs. Season each portion according to the kinds of meals you want to serve. I do some with taco seasoning, some with sloppy joe seasoning, and I leave some unseasoned to use in spaghetti sauce or shepherd's pie.

When the broth comes out of the canner you can process your jars of meat. They can all go in the canner together because they all have the same processing time. Again, follow all instructions for safe ground beef processing.

When everything is cooled and you've confirmed that the seals are good, you are ready to tuck your precious jars into the pantry.

Your finished amounts will depend on the size of the portions you created and the amount of water you used to make your broth. For my family, this process yields: eight pints of broth, two dozen tacos, six sloppy joe sandwiches, six spaghetti servings, and two big pots of chili (more than two dozen servings).

The meat you left unseasoned can be used for so much more than just spaghetti sauce. Pull it out when you want to make quick stuffed peppers or cabbage rolls. Make your own Hamburger Helper meals or a Tex-Mex salad. Ground meat is pretty flexible and having it already cooked makes dinner a breeze.

The seasoned beef is plenty versatile too. Use your taco meat mix for nachos or burritos or empanadas. Use spaghetti sauce for lasagna. Use sloppy joe mix for dressing up baked potatoes or in lettuce wraps.

Tip: Remember the beef fat you skimmed off? You can use a little of that when you heat up the meat prior to seasoning; it adds back that little bit of browning that some people miss.

Read the whole thing.

The Christian Genocide Continues ... in Syria

Often forgotten is the suffering and persecution that Christians regularly experience at the hands of Muslims. In that regard, German Chancellor Merkel's pointing out the elephant in the room was a refreshing change. However, the few Christians in Syria are being driven out or killed by the Syrian rebels (yes, the same ones to whom Obama is secretly supplying weapons).

In recent days news agencies published the story about the death of the last remaining Christian in the city of Homs, a city that has undergone a religious “clean up” by Islamic rebels. Elias Mansour, 84, a Greek Orthodox Christian, had not wanted to abandon his house in Via Wadi Sayeh because he had to look after his handicapped son. The neighbourhood in which he lived was the scene of violent clashes. An Orthodox priest is looking for his son, whose whereabouts are unknown.

. . . At the end of mass, the priest advises faithful in Bad Tuma to leave quietly, in small groups. Groups of more than four people have to split up. “Christians feel they are being targeted. On one church wall they wrote: “Christians, it’s your turn”. At the beginning, one of the slogans being shouted out was: 'the Alawites to the graves and the Christians to Beirut”. Now it is: “Alawites and Christians to the cemeteries”.”

I've been thinking recently of the Lord's Prayer:

  After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

  Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

  Give us this day our daily bread.

  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

I wonder how many of us actually pray "Thy kingdom come." From my own perspective, at least, I worry about all the horrible things that precede the Second Coming, so that I want to put it off. However, maybe it is time that we Christians earnestly begin to pray that the Lord return.

Ode to a Smashed Grecian Urn

I wish I could write poetry more complicated than "roses are red...," but I can't. So, I'll just quote from Fox News on some of the latest from Greece:

Life in Athens is often punctuated by demonstrations big and small, sometimes on a daily basis. Rows of shuttered shops stand between the restaurants that have managed to stay open. Vigilantes roam inner city neighborhoods, vowing to "clean up" what they claim the demoralized police have failed to do. Right-wing extremists beat migrants, anarchists beat the right-wing thugs and desperate local residents quietly cheer one side or the other as society grows increasingly polarized.

"Our society is on a razor's edge," Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias said recently, after striking shipyard workers broke into the grounds of the Defense Ministry. "If we can't contain ourselves, if we can't maintain our social cohesion, if we can't continue to act within the rules ... I fear we will end up being a jungle."

. . . Private businesses have closed down in the thousands. Unemployment stands at a record 25 percent, with more than half of Greece's young people out of work. Caught between plunging incomes and ever increasing taxes, families are finding it hard to make ends meet. Higher heating fuel prices have meant many apartment tenants have opted not to buy heating fuel this year. Instead, they'll make do with blankets, gas heaters and firewood to get through the winter. Lines at soup kitchens have grown longer. 

. . . In September, gangs of men smashed immigrant street vendors' stalls at fairs and farmers' markets. Videos posted on the Internet showed the incident being carried out in the presence of lawmakers from the extreme right Golden Dawn party. Formerly a fringe group, Golden Dawn — which denies accusations it has carried out violent attacks against immigrants — made major inroads into mainstream politics. It won nearly 7 percent of the vote in June's election and 18 seats in the 300-member parliament. A recent opinion poll showed its support climbing to 12 percent.

Immigrant and human rights groups say there has been an alarming increase in violent attacks on migrants. Greece has been the EU's main gateway for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants — and foreigners have fast become scapegoats for rising unemployment and crime.

While there are no official statistics, migrants tell of random beatings at the hands of thugs who stop to ask them where they are from, then attack them with wooden bats.

. . . Healthcare spending has been slashed as the country struggles to reduce its debt. Public hospitals complain of shortages of everything from gauzes to surgical equipment. Pharmacies regularly go on strike or refuse to fill subsidized social security prescriptions because government funds haven't paid them for the drugs already bought. Benefits have been slashed and hospital workers often go unpaid for months.

The story also indicates that doctors at at least one hospital have been unpaid since May at at least one hospital, while strikes by judges and prosecutors have essentially brought the justice system to a standstill.